Last week, as the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy lumbered on and its companion news story, the infamous Koran burning that wasn't, reached its anticlimactic culmination, we saw a spectacular example of one of the Right Wing's favorite electoral strategies: pick a target, stoke fear, and reap the political benefits of nativist backlash.
The Right is in the midst of a prolific run of fear campaigns -- against Muslims, against immigrants, against gay people, against "elites." In itself, that might not be news; the Right has been doing it for years. What is remarkable is how frequently, in the attempt to narrow the definition of who is a real American, the President of the United States himself is cast as the leader of an amorphous and scary invasion of people who are aren't from around here.
This smear has been floating around the edges of our political conversation since before President Obama was even elected, but it reached a new level of undisguised vitriol when Newt Gingrich -- former Speaker of the House and aspiring 2012 presidential candidate -- told the National Review that Obama displays "Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior," and that he "happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president."
Gingrich, at least, can no longer be accused of dog-whistle politics. He has come right out to say what many on the Right have been insinuating since Obama appeared on the political scene -- that the President is an un-American outsider who has pulled a fast one on the American people.
There is no need to further rebut Gingrich's remarks on factual grounds -- Marc Ambinder and Adam Serwer, among many others, have already demolished the flimsy basis for his assertions.
Gingrich's comments -- a response to a column along similar ridiculous lines by Dinesh D'Souza -- couldn't have much to do with the former speaker's thoughts on Obama's foreign policy. Instead, they were a deliberate appeal to the idea that the Right has been pushing of Obama as a strange and malicious "other."
Gingrich's remarks are only the most recent, and blatant, in a long line of right-wing fear-mongering about the president. Just last week, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, chair of the Republican Governors Association and another possible 2012 presidential contender, said of Obama, "This is a president that we know less about than any other president in history." This remark was factually untrue -- Obama wrote a book of his life story and much of the nation celebrated his personal story throughout a very lengthy campaign -- but served to advance the right-wing narrative about Obama's mysterious origins.
And that narrative has worked in their favor. Last month, a poll found that a quarter of Americans aren't convinced that Obama was born in the U.S. In another poll, nearly one in five said they believed that Obama was a Muslim -- a sharp increase from the response to the same question a year ago. Kyle Mantyla at People For's Right Wing Watch blog has been reporting that "birthers" -- those demanding copies of Obama's readily available Hawaiian birth certificate -- are now being joined by those demanding proof of Obama's baptism and Christian faith.
The campaign to frame Obama as a foreign invader -- and, as Gingrich has said, "the most radical president in American history" -- has been intimately tied in with the same fear-mongering that led to the outrageous reaction to the planned Muslim community center in lower Manhattan and that has stoked the kind of fear of immigrants that has led to racial profiling laws in places like Arizona. In troubled times, it's convenient to blame everyone -- both outsiders and those in power. In Obama, the irrational Right won the lottery.
The attempt to paint Obama as a dangerous foreign radical has very real, and scary consequences. A year ago, we reported on the revival of violent anti-government extremism in reaction to Obama's election. Since then, we have seen a violent strain in certain parts of the Tea Party movement -- from Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle insisting that "Second Amendment remedies" might be needed against "domestic enemies" to an Idaho gubernatorial candidate last year suggesting the issue of "Obama tags" for hunting the president.
But the impact of the Right's whisper campaign against Obama goes far beyond the president. The right-wing leaders who have been pushing, or tepidly refuting, lies about the president are often the same people who are stoking resentment against American Muslims, Latinos, and gay people. They are peddling a very narrow idea of what it means to be, as Sarah Palin once put it, part of "the real America." This definition of "the real America" doesn't include immigrants or their children; it doesn't include people of color; it doesn't include gay people.
When Gingrich and his allies build a myth about a foreign con artist president, they imply that all those who fall outside the narrowly defined "real America" are to be viewed with distrust. That may be an effective electoral strategy in the short run, but in the long run it stokes real divisions and creates real harm. And, it will not be an effective long-term strategy for the Right. The United States is a vibrantly diverse country and is growing more so. If the Right continues to insult and exclude entire groups of people, its politics will rapidly become obsolete.
Follow Michael B. Keegan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/peoplefor
Michael Shaw: Reading the Pictures: D'Souza's Rage as a Cover
Eugene Cho: Is He a Christian, a Muslim, or a Cactus? Why Can't We Just Believe President Obama?
And nothing sound more like it than that nut Palladino who is running for governor in NY. And the republicans chose this guy over Lazio? He wants to "institutionalize" welfare recipients in reconstructed prisons! What's next? Camps and ovens?
I believe it was the judge/magistrate in the movie "Cry Freedom" who stated the following: "The law is the law in South Africa. And justice is justice." It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I heard it. This is where, I'm afraid, the Right is headed. Ignoring the law, and dishing out their own brand of justice. Remember: they did it in Iraq between Abu-Ghraib and the variety of water boarding and other means of torture which violated the Geneva Conventions.
The fact that Bush, Rumsfeld and the funky bunch were not tried for war crimes is enough to push the Right further to see how much more they can get away with before the world cries "Enough" or goes all the way to the point of no return.
Deep down Americans in this country, whether a little prejudice or not, really don't care whether Obama is Kenyan or Muslim, that's why he was elected by a majority of white people.
No no no, one misses the point that Newt Gingrich can feed off a more obvious scape-goat of Obama because the 'change' he said he was going to bring has been nothing but more of the same.
He brought in all of the Clinton folks who profited big from a fake phony prosperous economy of the 90s, that laid a foundation for the BREAKDOWN CRISIS under the Bush and now Obama administration.
With President Obama's overly concern about his 'image', it would do him good to understand the underlying frustration that Newt Gingrich is exploiting and be honest with the people by forming a commission or blue-ribbon panel that declares the Federal Reserve System as INSOLVENT.
That will give him the political cover over Wall Street politicians who are against Glass-Steagall.
Once Glass-Steagall is restored then President Obama gains the political cover to kick-off a multi-generational, not '30 billion for small business', but a unlimited trillions to the rebuild of our nation's infrastructure.
Such a commitment of a long-term program can only come about after bankruptcy of the banksters.
First of all, there is no 'IF" about it. Playing the politics of divide and conquer - pitting "us" against "them" - is a core part of the Right's basic political DNA. It simply is who they are.
Secondly, its obsolescence can't come quickly enough for me - though I'm not exactly holding my breath here. There will continue to be a robust "market" for its particular "brand" of racial enmity, lies, smears and inflammatory hate speech - so long as ignorant, bigoted, gullible people exist to be manipulated.
MM
-- But don't you dare say it's racially motivated.
Thank you Newt and Sarah and Glenn and Boehner and Bachman and O'Donnell and, well, there are just too many wackos in the GOP to name, so let's just say: Thank you GOP for your disdain for education ;0
Since when, in the country that celebrates 1776, the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and Washington, Adams, Paine and Franklin, is "anti-colonial" such a terrible thing to be?
Or is it okay to be against British imperial rule over white people in New England and Virginia, but it's evil to be against British imperial rule in Kenya?
If there is any coherence at all to the vile rantings of the once-quasi-respectable Newt, what could his hateful statements actually *mean*? Is "Kenyan anti-colonial" just another way to say "uppity Negro", or "Democrat we don't like"?
Any actual answers, or just more smearing from your ilk ("Marxist Muslim Fascist yadda yadda yadda....." ad nauseam)?
I thought so.
Keep in mind that there was more to the Columbian exchange than turkeys and pumpkins--it was an epoch-making migration of peoples. The United States is not just a colonial power, we are ourselves the most successful colony in human history. All our founding fathers, including the very ones you name, were fervidly pro-colonial. They were involved in one way or another in exploration and expansion. Look it all up: "Sullivan expedition," "Northwest Ordinance," "Pontiac's rebellion"--it goes on and on.
We're still waiting for the boogie man to come get us....when will that happen Newt?.....or.... did I miss it? Maybe the boogie man was GWBush? Or maybe it's Newt?????? Is it you 'Newt' we need to fear???
Here, however, you should substitute "horse" with "Right-winger", "water" with "facts" and "drink" with "think."
How did the nation that idolizes George Washington, Thomas Paine, Nathan Hale and Paul Revere end up using "anti-colonialist" as an INSULT??